The flags on the University of Illinois Springfield quad tell the story: almost three thousand of them, each representing a wrongful conviction. They’re black, except for the 359 blue ones, representing those in Illinois.

Christine Ferree, program director of case evaluation of the Illinois Innocence Project, says she is not trying to help criminals get off the hook.

New data offers a glimpse as to how Sangamon County residents are feeling during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

University of Illinois Springfield published its biennial citizen survey on Tuesday. Similar to its 2019 findings, there was an even split among the 726 survey respondents on whether Sangamon County is headed in the right direction.

Administrators with the University of Illinois system paid a visit to Southern Illinois this week.

They said they want to be more involved in Southern Illinois — and that they would like for the region to be more involved with the system’s campuses, programs, outreach and economic development efforts.

Working toward that goal, a group of U of I leaders spent Monday in the region as part of a statewide tour, meeting with legislators, business leaders and representatives of Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

The University of Illinois Springfield, UIS, announced on Tuesday it has created three new schools to better serve students and meet the needs of our Capital Region community, including the addition of new degrees and minors that are now open for enrollment.

The U.S. economy is getting better, but at a slow rate.

A local economist said there is still a way to go before we’re back to pre-pandemic levels.

Kenneth Kriz, an economist professor at the University of Illinois Springfield, said smaller cities and towns tend to have lower unemployment rates

“In terms of where we are at in the economic cycle, we’ve recovered quite a bit of the way from the bottom of the cycle but we’re not all the way back.”